One of the most enduring lessons of my life came from the opportunities of living in foreign countries and looking back at my own through their perceptions.
The U.S. looms much larger in the lives of other lands than they do in ours. Seen from the other side of an ocean or border, our country, its ways, and customs can appear to be a very strange place, indeed.
An all-time favorite cartoon by Matt Bradshaw captured that sense 10 years ago. It shows Martians observing North America from space, apparently in autumn. On a video call, one alien tells a distant colleague, “Last month they were lobotomizing pumpkins. Now, they’re shoving bread up a turkey’s ass. This planet has issues, Bert.”
We do.
At least in the United States.
And there is no better example of this than the hysterical events of recent days concerning historical documents reportedly “discovered” in several unauthorized places.
Joe Biden claims he has no memory of putting so many Classified documents in his borrowed university office in Washington, in his very own garage in Delaware, and in a nearby closet and drawers.
As if not remembering makes it OK. Joe Biden doesn’t remember a lot of things, like where he is at any given time, say, being in Cambodia but calling it Colombia or elevating Kamala Harris to the presidency. God forbid.
Of course, anyone having any such papers anywhere outside the National Archives after their term in office is completely illegal.
That’s why Biden’s Justice Department appointed a special prosecutor to look into how and why Donald Trump had a bunch of them in his Florida home.
He’s a villain, of course, so sending in an FBI Swat team and legally going after a former president for the first time is understandable, kind of like what a new regime might do in a South American coffee country.
Indeed, such extraordinary actions seem necessary since all the other concocted schemes like Russiagate, countless un-sourced Deep State leaks, running lists of lies, social media censorship, and twin impeachments have all failed to disqualify him so far in the minds of many from attempting to wreak election revenge come 2024.
We also got the appointment last week of yet another DOJ special prosecutorto look into these documents illegally stored by Joe Biden, who says he didn’t know about them. Recent prosecutions of big shots by special prosecutors have not proven very special. They just vent some PR heat.
The White House spokeswoman, who was clearly not appointed for any PR qualifications, answers media demands for details by declaring how transparent the Biden team is being about this mess, while being especially opaque. As if repeating nothing makes it something.
Questions like why, six years after the Obama administration was terminated, were Biden lawyers just now poking through their client’s Delaware garage? Why there if he had no memory?
Or searching his abandoned office at a university where he was a full professor but never taught a class in return for a large payment? Now, three more Classified troves uncovered inside his house.
Why wasn’t the FBI in on this, as it was for Trump?
Why did the Biden crowd wait two months to announce the initial document violation? Oh, look! It came just days before the November midterms?
Joe Biden, of course, remains puzzled. He explains the documents about Ukraine and Iraq, which he claims to have no memory or ever even seeing, were secure in his garage because that’s where his 67 Corvette is stored. So, the place was locked. Who had keys?
It’s not like they were in the street, he says, as if that would make any legal difference. Joe Biden once claimed he finished atop his law class, which he didn’t. But even he knows that professing ignorance of a national-security law violation is not exculpatory.
As my good friend Jim Geraghty of National Review noted,
Strangely, the law does not carve out an exception for classified documents held near a 1967 Corvette Stingray.
When cornered, Joe Biden has a 20-watt way of completely missing relevant points, either intentionally or because he has no notes instructing him what to say.
Remember during the lethal Kabul troop withdrawal when he was asked about desperate Afghans clinging to the outside of departing US planes and falling to their death? And the president’s answer was, “That was four days ago.”
That Biden house, by the way, is the residential address that renowned artist Hunter Biden put on his driver’s license.
So, the man pulling down 80 grand a month at the time from a corrupt Ukrainian energy company and his shady foreign associates had access to the locked garage with all the classified Ukraine documents that Joe Biden claims he did not know were next to his beloved Corvette.
This may answer why a vice president six years out of office would still have Classified documents and leave them unguarded in his garage.
Washington is a beautiful city. It’s just some inhabitants who are weird. Remember Hank Johnson, the Georgia Democrat who worried in a House hearing some years ago that the island of Guam might tip over from its growing population? He was assured that was not of immediate concern.
The other day Rep. Johnson (yeh, he keeps getting elected) postulated that the documents illegally stored by Biden had been planted.
“I’m suspicious of the timing of it,” Johnson said. “I’m also aware of the fact that things can be planted on people. Places and things can be planted. Things can be planted in places and then discovered conveniently.”
That’s one conspiracy theory that should entertain foreign observers.
Here’s another interesting possibility. Establishment Democrats know that a frail 82-year-old Joe Biden would likely be demolished in a reelection campaign that a poll last month shows 70 percent of voters don’t want (61 percent don’t want a Trump re-run either).
So, they set up Docu-Gate to torpedo Biden’s campaign before it launched to save themselves from political oblivion. Plan B will have to address the future of Vice President Word Salad.
DC media, of course, rushed to claim there were many important differences between Trump’s alleged violation and Biden’s. In truth, the most important difference is that Trump is a Republican, reviled for his impudent election upset of Hillary Clinton’s Oval Office inheritance.
Biden is not Trump. That’s why he got elected. He’s a dim, fading bulb who doesn’t know it.
But Biden is a Democrat. He ran in 2020 as a moderate, veered radically left to spend five trillion freshly printed dollars, and, figuratively speaking, is now pedaling as fast as he can toward the center because he thinks he’ll be the Democrats’ nominee next year.
Another truth, which cannot be spoken in Washington, is that without even trying, like so many other times in his 725-day presidency (40 percent of it spent on vacay) Joe Biden himself has screwed up the latest shot at driving Trump into a political guardrail.
DC media may desire to portray a difference and legal nuances in the Biden and Trump docu-dramas. You can argue that from here to Scranton.
Residents of fly-over country are ignorant, of course. But in their collective wisdom, these cases are now identical.
If Attorney General Merrick “I’m Not on the Supreme Court Because of Trump Republicans” Garland goes all out to prosecute President No. 45 and gives No. 46 any kind of a pass like Hillary Clinton got for her email imbroglio, America will see his operation for what it has become, the Department of Injustice.